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Champagne Cream
Beat the yolks of five eggs very thoroughly, and add by degrees some finely-pounded white sugar, sufficient to make it stiff and firm. Then add a bottle of champagne; keep on stirring till it is all mixed. Last of all, put in a table-spoonful of brandy. Put the cream into a glass jug, and serve it in champagne glasses. Time, a quarter of an hour. The probable cost will depend upon the price of the champagne. Sufficient for six persons.
This is an uncooked sabayon: five raw yolks slackened with a whole bottle of champagne and served straight from the jug. The wine does nothing to make the eggs safe, and the recipe never brings them near heat.
- The yolks are never cookedThe "time, a quarter of an hour" refers only to beating and stirring; there is no pan, no bain-marie and no heat anywhere in the method. Raw yolks carry a risk of Salmonella, and this version has no step that would reduce it.
- Alcohol is not a treatmentChampagne is roughly 12% alcohol by volume, and once diluted through six servings of egg and sugar it is far below any level that would inactivate bacteria. The tablespoon of brandy makes no practical difference either.
- It sits at room temperatureThe mixture is poured into a glass jug and served from it, and nothing in the recipe calls for chilling; an egg-rich liquid held unrefrigerated is the condition in which bacteria multiply.
- Who should avoid it entirelyAnyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised should not be served uncooked egg in any form, and this dish is served to a table of six with no way to know who is at risk.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe for a cooked sabayon or one built on pasteurised egg yolks. Both exist, and both give the same foamed wine custard without the hazard here.
- On the quantities, for reading purposesA standard modern bottle of champagne is 75 cl, though Victorian bottle sizes varied somewhat; the sugar is measured only by feel — "sufficient to make it stiff and firm" is the yolk-and-sugar ribbon stage, before any wine goes in. No weight is given.
Champagne cream belongs to the family of wine-and-yolk froths that runs from Italian zabaglione through French sabayon, most versions of which are whisked over hot water until they thicken; this one dispenses with the heat and relies on the sheer volume of wine to carry the eggs, which puts it closer to a drinkable posset or a syllabub than to a custard. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, which appeared in parts through the 1870s, was compiled for the Victorian middle-class household, and the airy note that "the probable cost will depend upon the price of the champagne" tells you how the book handled luxury: it printed the recipe without apology and left the reader to price the bottle. Sparkling champagne was by then firmly established in Britain as the wine of celebration, and using an entire bottle in a dessert for six would have read as something of a flourish he occasion before anyone tasted it.